Plant Breeding 2050: Next-Gen Crops

This book addresses the global issue of food security for the year 2050, when the population is expected to rise to 10 billion people. It is estimated that by year 2025 itself, the number of people experiencing acute hunger will rise to 270 million due to food crisis. Enhancing the existing sustainable agriculture activities to increase global food production is thus a necessity for achieving the sustainable development goal of zero hunger. This book discusses the creation of highly annotated crop pan-genomes that provide a snapshot of the genetic diversity. The advancements in genomic-assisted breeding techniques which enables restoration of a specie's lost gene repertoire are also covered. The progression of agriculture to automation or digitalization through high-throughput phenotyping techniques and big data analytical tools like artificial intelligence and machine learning is also discussed. Other important topics covered include systems biology approach, speed breeding, multiomics data interpretation and multidisciplinary breeding platforms.
This book is a reference book for students, researchers, scientists and policymakers working in the field of agriculture, plant breeding and global food security.